Amanda Marcotte compares a baby to human waste

Amanda Marcotte at RH Reality Check wrote that “there’s really no way for anti-choicers to conduct themselves civilly when promoting their cause. After all, the cause itself is uncivil. Civil people don’t nose around in other people’s private lives, try to impose their weird religious dogma on the unwilling, or try to destroy other people’s pleasure just for the sake of doing it.”

First, the pro-life cause opposes the intentional killing of innocent human life, whereas the pro-abortion cause, promoted by Marcotte, supports the intentional killing of innocent human life. Which is uncivil?

Second, Marcotte’s claim that abortion is private is a logical fallacy, called begging the question, which rests on the assumptions that a fetus is not a person and that a fetus either does not have human rights or has less human rights than a pregnant woman. Unless these assumptions are proven and established as facts, the claim that abortion is private is false. And these assumptions have never been proven.

Third, the “weird religious dogma” that Marcotte referred to is the principle: “Thou shalt not kill.” According to Marcotte’s logic (and I use the word logic very lightly), you would also be uncivil if you supported the principle: “Thou shalt not steal.” Several harmful acts, such as killing and stealing, are opposed by people based on religious principles. That does not make opposition to killing or stealing wrong.

Fourth, by portraying pro-lifers as anti-sex, Marcotte resorted to using a personal attack on her opponents. Pro-lifers, however, are not against sex. Pro-lifers are for responsible sex. And not, as Marcotte alleged, for the sake of destroying other people’s pleasure.

Marcotte used a crude analogy to emphasize her anti-sex argument, writing: “If they [the anti-choice movement] applied their approach to sex when approaching food, they’d be running around jeering at people in restaurants for eating for pleasure, and they’d run ads showing the contents of the toilet after #2 with language suggesting that since poo is disgusting, the practice of eating for pleasure should be ended.”

For Marcotte, sex is comparable to food, and abortion is comparable to a bowel movement. So, what does that make the baby? Because the end product of having sex is a baby, and the end product of eating food is feces. In Marcotte’s analogy, a baby is human waste. OK. Who is uncivil again?